Imugene Limited's (ASX:IMU) chief executive officer and managing director Leslie Chong has exercised 27 million options at an exercise price of $405,000.
Chong now holds a significant personal investment of more than 31 million shares and +50 million options in the company.
Last month, Imugene received a second Human Research Ethics Committee approval to begin a phase-I clinical trial of its cancer checkpoint immunotherapy candidate, PD1-Vaxx in Australia.
Ethics approval is confirmation that Imugene has completed all necessary pre-clinical safety and efficacy testing of PD1-Vaxx required to begin human clinical trials.
Involving non-small cell lung cancer patients
The first-in-human, Phase-1 multi-centre dose-escalation study of PD1-Vaxx will involve patients with non-small cell lung cancer.
Medical investigators will test different doses of PD1-Vaxx as a monotherapy and in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs.
The primary aim of the Phase-1 trial is to determine safety and an optimal biological dose as a monotherapy and later in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors.